Long-Term Effects || attentivephysician + thewinningscenario
thewinningscenario answered:
"You can stop looking through the database for the kid’s name now," Jim mumbled. He leaned against Bones’s desk, exhaustion beyond long hours and a heavy workload showing in the deep lines around his eyes and mouth, the creases in his forehead. "You’re not going to find it."
"Don’t know why, of all fucking things for your psych thesis, you want to do this." Jim stared down at Bones’s PADD, his jaw tight as he scrolled through pictures of Starfleet’s worst human disaster in a century before returning to the same image of a dangerously-emaciated boy, hair too matted with dirt to be of distinguishable color, half-hidden under the foundation of a Capital building, blazing blue eyes gleaming out from the shadows.
"Long-term effects of trauma. Jesus Christ." He shook his head, spitting out the words under his breath. For a second Jim looked totally transformed, his entire body hard, jagged rock edges and cut glass. He took the PADD in hand, holding it up beside his face with a hard, pained smile. The color was identical. "I took myself off the fucking list for a reason."
Sometimes it paid to know technology.
"I want to do this because SOMEONE is deadset on graduating a year early and I can't let SOMEONE go to space without me--" Leonard cut off his distracted tirade as soon as he saw that picture, those eyes. He felt the same way he'd felt the first time that he'd seen them; like he was looking into twin neutron stars. Like he was staring into something both hot and cold-- ancient and unbelievably young, all at once. Of course, he'd been a little drunk at the time. And the odd quandary of those eyes had been a welcome distraction from the unnerving shudder of the aircraft. "And... I wanted to... to stand out a little," he finished, his mouth dry and his head spinning with ways that couldn't possibly be Jim. But the math worked out. And he'd never mistake those eyes. When Jim took the PADD, it thankfully broke the spell enough for him to look at his friend-- but then he was confronted by the side-by-side comparison. "..."